Innovation: Electronics That Can Bend

J.J. McCorvey is a reporter at Inc. magazine, where he covers a wide range of topics, including technology and business research. He has covered metro news for The Detroit News, and his work has been featured in Men's Fitness.

Imagine a shirt that could monitor your heart rate without wires or clunky devices. MC10, a company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is developing flexible, high-performance electronics that could make that possible. Instead of using rigid circuit boards, MC10 joins components such as microchips and electrodes with springy connectors made of gold wire. Then it embeds the devices in stretchy material, such as silicone rubber or spandex. The technology can be used, for example, to place a device in a spandex shirt and monitor an athlete's heart rate during physical activity. MC10 has received an $850,000 grant from the U.S. Navy to create flexible solar modules for tents and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as a shared $1.7 million grant from the Department of Energy to develop flexible thermoelectric devices.